Staff Reporter :BNP Chairperson Begum Khaleda Zia smells rats at the attack on Debiganj temple and killing of its priest. In a press statement issued on Tuesday, she said that the frightful incident of killing of the Hindu temple priest with a sharp machete and gun attack on other devotees bear a sign of ominous future. She termed the incident as a perverted brutality. On Sunday morning, priest Jogeshwar Roy, 50, of Sonto Gourir Moth in Deviganj upazila of Panchagarh district was hacked to death and a devotee shot in an attack by some miscreants. Strongly condemning and protesting the incident, Khaleda Zia demanded immediate arrest of the attackers and exemplary punishment to them. She also prayed for salvation of the departed soul of priest Jogeshwar Roy. The BNP chief blamed the rise of militancy in the country during the current ‘one-party misrule of the Awami League government’. “The rise of barbaric and nonsense extremist groups has been seen as a side-effect in the countries where one-party rule is on. The current government came to power through a voter-less election and established one-party rule in the country,” she said.Mentioning some civil society members’ recent observation, Khaleda Zia said that the worried civil society members repeatedly warned that there is a possibility of emergence of extremist, blind radical forces and the militancy because the current government enforced a ‘one-party rule in the country’.She alleged that the government has snatched peoples’ democratic rights. Today, people have lost their rights to debate, criticism or protest. On the other side, extremist and radical forces are being powerful in absence of good governance, she added. Khaleda Zia termed the killing of foreigners, bloggers and publishers as well as attackers of priests as a force ‘against humanity, civilisation and modern state’. The cruel plan has first been executed with the recent killing of Italian citizen Cesare Tavella, she said. She further said, “The current situation gives us an impression that we are moving towards the nation’s graveyard. At this very bad time, a question has risen in public mind what is doing the government?” The BNP chief alleged that the government did not take any initiative against the killings of people one after another over the last few months. It even couldn’t unearth the mystery behind the murders.She criticised the government for shifting blame on the opposition and implicating them in false and fabricated cases in the incidents instead of tracking down the offenders and resisting their dangerous attacks. The government, however, is repeatedly trying to convince the international community and the country’s people that there is no militancy in the country. But people are now deeply worried about existence of militancy in the country, she said.
